One-to-One Marketing

This week's lecture on market segmentation, targeting and positioning has made me reflect back to the time when I came across a digital one-to-one marketing campaign. It started with a need to purchase a simple face cream that are able to meet my specific needs. After taking various suggestions from friends (word-of-mouth marketing at its best), I went to Olay's website. Overwhelmed with endless options, I was delighted to see that Olay has a personalised skin care consultation.

I am aware that they are not the first cosmetic company that has come up with a personalised consultation, however, as I went through the process, I discovered that Olay has gone above and beyond what others have done beforehand. Their initial question was not the standard 'what is your skin type'. Instead, they asked 'what I want to do today for my skin'. The consultation was fully customised to my specific needs, and at the conclusion, Olay offered several product choices that are suitable for my skin needs as well as gave the reason behind the chosen products. It also recommends a tailored daily routine to take care of my skin.

Olay has done an excellent job in creating an interactive, individual marketing that makes its customers (current and potential) feels that they are being taken care of, even if the consultation was done online. The whole process was very personal, and it is an excellent way to 'interact one-to-one with masses of customers to design products that are tailor-made to individual needs' (Kotler et al 2009, p. 245). In saying so, I believe that this method of one-to-one marketing can be applied to financial services institutions. More and more people are relying on internet banking to conduct transactions, often they want to invest their money but may not have the time to go into their bank branch. An interactive, personalised banking consultation may resolve this issue; bringing more customers for the bank 24/7, ease of information search for customers and it may even give the bank a competitive advantage over other banks.